If you want your patience to be tested, try filling a report card

In a meeting with my guide, Tarun mentioned that it would be a good idea to fill the report card for each of the students from my scenarios based on their profile that I had created. While doing this, I realized for the first time that even putting a few alphabets in a printed file out of excel can be highly confusing, and frustrating. I only had to fill the report cards for five students–I can’t even begin to imagine the effort it takes (out of school) to fill report cards of a minimum of 40 students for every teacher.

While filling the report card, a few problems became very obvious. I began to see how there really need not be any connection between the student’s performance and what is being shown on the report card. If the report card were an abstract representation of student performance, the amount of abstraction is extremely high, leaving out necessary details which show an incomplete picture.

What this represents is a generic picture of the student as per his / her personality.

One of the things that gave me a hard time while filling the report card was the three different kinds of grading systems being used for different indicators. The non-uniformity makes it hard to perceive the actual value of what is being represented.